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Al Jazeera America Shifts Focus to U.S. News

The Al Jazeera America studio in Manhattan. The channel plans to have about 800 employees when it begins.Credit
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

While it has a foreign name, the forthcoming Al Jazeera cable channel in the United States wants to be American through and through.

When Al Jazeera’s owners in Qatar acquired Al Gore’s Current TV in January, they said that Current would be replaced by Al Jazeera America, an international news channel with 60 percent new programming from the United States.

The remaining 40 percent, they said, would come from Al Jazeera English, their existing English-language news channel in Doha, Qatar, that is already available in much of the rest of the world.

That plan is no more. Now Al Jazeera America is aiming to have virtually all of its programming originate from the United States, according to staff members and others associated with the channel who were interviewed in recent weeks.

It will look inward, covering domestic affairs more often than foreign affairs. It will, in other words, operate much like CNN (though the employees say they won’t be as sensational) and Fox News (though they say they won’t be opinion-driven).

The programming strategy, more ambitious than previously understood, is partly a bid to gain acceptance and give Americans a reason to tune in. It may help explain why Al Jazeera America’s start date has been delayed once already, to August from July, and why some employees predict it will be delayed again.

Al Jazeera also has yet to hire a president or a slate of vice presidents to run the channel on a day-to-day basis, which has spurred uncomfortable questions about whether earlier controversies involving the pan-Arab news giant are creating difficulties for the new channel.

Photo

Al Jazeera America employees at a meeting in the network’s Midtown Manhattan offices.Credit
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

The Arabic-language Al Jazeera was condemned by the American government a decade ago for broadcasting videotapes from Osama bin Laden and other materials deemed to be terrorist propaganda. Others have criticized the Arabic and English channels for being a mouthpiece for Qatar, though the channel’s representatives insist that is not the case. Other questions about bias persist; as recently as last week, the Al Jazeera Web site was accused of publishing an anti-Semitic article by a guest columnist.

But Al Jazeera America employees profess confidence that they will be able to work free of interference. Some are already rehearsing with mock newscasts. Others are fanning out to report news stories from parts of the country rarely visited by camera crews. Still others are setting up new studios in New York, where the channel will have a home inside the Manhattan Center, and in Washington, where it will take over space previously occupied by ABC at the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue.

New employees are being added to the rolls every weekday from places like CNN, “Frontline” and Time magazine. “We expect to have approximately 800 employees when we launch,” said Ehab Al Shihabi, the Al Jazeera executive in charge of international operations, including the American channel. He declined to comment on the delays, but said the channel would start “later this summer.”

Since January, he and his colleagues’ overarching message to lawmakers, mayors, cable operators, and potential viewers has been that Al Jazeera is coming to America to supply old-fashioned, boots-on-the-ground news coverage to a country that doesn’t have enough of it.

A series of announcements about new hires like Ed Pound, an experienced investigative reporter, and new bureaus in cities like Detroit have bolstered that message. Public relations and marketing firms retained by Al Jazeera, like Qorvis Communications and Siegel & Gale, have worked to limit opposition to the channel and increase support for its arrival.

Al Jazeera representatives seem aware that they are confronting an enormous marketing challenge. But they benefit from the public perception that they have boundlessly deep pockets, thanks to the oil and gas wealth of Qatar. Al Jazeera America has been portrayed by some as a giant stimulus project for American journalism at a time when other news organizations are suffering cutbacks. “This is the first big journalism hiring binge that anyone’s been on for a long time,” said the business reporter and anchor Ali Velshi when he left CNN in April for a prime time spot on Al Jazeera America.

Al Jazeera tried and failed for years to get cable operators to carry Al Jazeera English — a button-down challenger to BBC and CNN International — in the United States. Acquiring Current TV gave it a new way into the country and many expected Al Jazeera America to be a glorified simulcast of its existing English-language channel, one that would give Americans more access to a world news perspective.

But cable operators objected to that idea, saying in essence that they had repeatedly chosen not to carry the existing channel, so Al Jazeera couldn’t sneak it onto their cable lineups through Current, according to several Al Jazeera America employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in an effort to speak freely about internal matters. (They call the channel “Ajam” — pronounced like A-Rod — for the way it’s abbreviated.)

Another calculation was purely competitive: to compel people to change the channel from CNN or MSNBC, “you can’t just plug in someone else’s international news,” one staff member said. “The filter has to be international news that has an impact on American lives,” said another.

This realization drove Al Jazeera to rethink the programming mix for the new channel. They set out to hire more Americans than originally planned.

Mr. Al Shihabi declined to describe the specific reasons for the changes, but he said Al Jazeera America “will be an American news channel that broadcasts news of interest and importance to its American audience.”

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“The precise split will vary from day to day depending only on what is newsworthy and important,” he said. “We expect most days will primarily be domestic news. But Al Jazeera’s 70 bureaus around the world will mean that we will have an unparalleled ability to report on important global stories that Americans are not seeing elsewhere. We will do that when it is warranted.”

The American channel’s daily schedule will consist mainly of live newscasts, with some talk shows and taped documentaries as well, according to an internal presentation reviewed by The New York Times. Three Al Jazeera English programs that are based in Washington, “The Stream,” “Inside Story Americas” and “Fault Lines,” are on the tentative schedule.

Its flagship nighttime show was to be titled “Main Street Journal,” according to the presentation, but is now “America Tonight.” The title is still subject to change.

Mr. Al Shihabi said it would be a “five-night-a-week prime-time newsmagazine that will present the day’s news in Al Jazeera’s typical unbiased, objective, long-form style,” including “stories that are not covered elsewhere.”

The channel has hired Kim Bondy, a former executive producer for CNN, to run the new show, but it has yet to hire an anchor for it. In fact, the only anchor identified by Al Jazeera so far is Mr. Velshi.

The news organization has multiple recruiting firms lining up anchors, correspondents and executives, though, and Mr. Al Shihabi said “discussions are well under way for all senior positions.” For the president position, Al Jazeera wants a journalist who is also a “statesman,” several employees said, owing to the political realities of the job.

Correction: August 9, 2013

An article on May 27 about the cable channel Al Jazeera America misidentified the building in New York in which the channel’s studios are located. They are in the Manhattan Center, not in the adjacent New Yorker Hotel. The error was only recently pointed out by a reader.

A version of this article appears in print on May 27, 2013, on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Al Jazeera America Shifts Focus to U.S. News. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe